The Holy Spirit Wrote My Resumé

Most resumés are victory parades in bullet points. We stack verbs like trophies—launched, led, scaled, and hope a hiring panel finds our highlight reel convincing. But Christians live by another set of measures, older than HR and sharper than LinkedIn: fruit and faithfulness. If the Holy Spirit edited your CV, what would stay? What would suddenly feel strangely small?

This isn’t about throwing skills out. Skills put food on the table and keep ministries moving. It’s about telling the truer story. The one where competence is stewardship, results are witness, and the headline is not “Look what I did,” but “Look where grace bore fruit.”

What Skills Can’t Say (But Fruit Can)

Skills are powerful and public. Fruit is quiet and stubborn. Skills answer scarcity, pick me, I can do X, but fruit answers identity, this is who grace is making me. In the Gospels, the wins are rarely flashy: a widow’s two coins, a boy’s small lunch, ordinary water poured at a wedding that turns into wine. If you only count the visible, you’ll miss most of the Kingdom.

Jesus’ test is disarmingly simple: “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16). Not by their reels. Not by their follower counts. Not even by their outcomes. Because outcomes can be borrowed, gamed, or inherited. However, fruit grows in you or it doesn’t. Patience either appears in conflict or it vanishes at the first sign of inconvenience. Kindness either costs you something or it’s just brand safety.

How a Spirit-Written Resumé Reads Differently

A conventional CV opens with an objective, which is what I want from the world. A Christian story begins with vocation, who I give myself to. “You shall love the Lord your God… and your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:37–39) is not a slogan; it’s a rubric. Where adjectives normally sit, patient, empathetic, resilient, a Spirit resumé prefers evidence. Not “I’m patient,” but “I stayed present with a grieving family for three nights, with prayer and quiet company, not solutions.” Not “I’m a peacemaker,” but “I stepped out of a public argument and pursued private reconciliation; the relationship healed.”

Faithfulness, too, gets airtime, because it is the one metric almost no one tracks and almost everyone trusts. Promotions hang on peaks; faithfulness reveals itself across time: the early mornings you kept showing up, the hidden volunteering, the prayer you kept when the room got smaller, and the applause stopped. Jesus’ commendation is telling: “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23). Not clever. Not famous. Faithful. And then there are the Works of Mercy. The concrete outcomes heaven actually counts (Matthew 25:31 46): who was fed, visited, clothed, and accompanied. In most resumés, this sits at the bottom under “community.” In a Spirit-edited document, mercy isn’t charity wallpaper; it’s a central indicator that love has become a habit.

Finally, the section almost no résumé includes, but every saint would recognise: Failures Surrendered. Not as spectacle, but as formation. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The world hides weakness; the Church narrates how grace moved through it.

Why This Matters in Workplaces Too

This reframing isn’t only for parish halls. Trust is the currency of every team, and character is the engine of trust. A fruit-and-faithfulness résumé quietly signals: You can rely on my inner life when the outer pressures rise. It says meetings won’t outpace mercy, deadlines won’t drown honesty, and results won’t replace people. That’s not naïve; that’s durable. Leaders recognise it quickly: the colleague whose competence is steady because their soul is anchored; the staff member who can absorb pressure without passing it on; the manager who can make hard calls without cruelty. “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Matthew 11:30) doesn’t make work trivial; it makes it fitting, a load built for shoulders shaped by grace.

What It Could Look Like on Paper

Imagine page one beginning with a Vocation Statement: one or two sentences that name the season you’re in and the people you exist to serve. Follow it with Fruit, evidenced, brief, specific stories where love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control actually appeared (Galatians 5:22–23). Then a Faithfulness Timeline, a line of small obediences that don’t trend on social media but do transform a life. Add Gifts Stewarded (1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12), described in terms of people helped rather than platforms built. Place Works of Mercy where other CVs put awards. Keep a frank column for Failures & Learnings Surrendered. Close with The Next Yes, because discipleship is forward-facing. Read from top to bottom, the document sounds less like marketing copy and more like testimony. It doesn’t inflate you; it locates you, inside God’s story, for the good of other people.

The Invitation (and a Little Help)

Here’s the simplest way to begin: pray before you write. Ask, “Holy Spirit, where has your life borne fruit in me, and where are you asking for my next yes?” Then draft the page. If you’re brave, ask someone who really knows you, “Where have you seen the Spirit’s fruit in my life?” Their answers will be clearer than your adjectives. Using the ideas above, create your own Holy Spirit Resumé. It will include space for a vocation statement, fruit evidence, gifts, a faithfulness timeline, works of mercy, hidden faithfulness, failures surrendered, intercessors & references, and your next yes.

Then decide what to do with it. Keep it as a rule-of-life document. Share it with a spiritual director. Offer it alongside your standard CV when it serves. Or tuck it into your Bible and update it each Lent. However you use it, let it tell the truth: skills opened doors, but the Spirit taught you how to walk through them with love. Because at the end of every interview, one question remains, asked not by a panel, but by a King: Did your life bear fruit? May your answer be simple and bright.